DrMike2000

My MA/SR Stalker has survived several teamwipes, and cleared up the mess so that others can rez. I'm at 45% to all positions, but that isn't hard to get there with SR, and there's always a cheap purple pill for those epic moments before reaching the softcap.

The difference from a MA/SR Scrapper is not that noticeable. Less hit points, and I miss Dragon's Tail. But the epic moments are still there.

I'd seriously consider Super Reflexes. I've played Ninja too, and don't miss the extra perks like the self heal much at all. Ninja starts off much better, but SR finishes ahead.

I often skip the 4 minute recharge AoE hold on my Controllers.

But not this one. Another vote to take it.

I think its a great idea for a paid booster pack.

Alternate animations is a luxury item. If you can't afford it, no worries, you aren't left underpowered next to your teammates.
Once Power pool customisation is added to the game this would make even more sense.

Themed animations (eg magical runes for Medicine Pool, Tough, Weave, Hasten and a Magic Carpet Flight pose) would make great packs additional packs.

My suggestion would be to go Pyre Mastery this way:
Keep Thunderstrike sets in Fire Blast and Char and take FireBall. You can probably frankenslot this 2 Acc/Dam, 2 Dam/Rech, so we need two more slotsm, since Block of Ice only had 2.

Drop Cloak of Fear and take Oppressive Gloom. You do loose 3.75% S/L Defence, but, you have 70% S/L resist, a full heal every 20 seconds or so and a mez aura. And the ability to stun bosses with one hit. So do you really need that S/L defence?
OG needs very few slots so you can move them to Fireball. Is S/L Defence is a key goal, then no worries, I guess you dont need OG anyway.

E/N defence, on the other hand, is always good to cover your low energy resistance.

Oh yeah, for slotting Dark Regen, I'd change that Theft +Heal into a +Heal/Rech at least. The heal from Dark regn doesn't need as much slotting as Recharge does, since it will heal you to full from 3 minions unslotted. If you're farming, it will almost always over-heal you. You cna even skimp on accuracy slotting if you expect to face big groups all the time.

My mistake. I didn't check those figures.

But, the ST blasts are still much smaller than Short Circuit's value.

I've never actually checked this before. Lets see...

Say at level 50 a minion has around 400 hit points and 100 endurance.

Charged Bolt and Lightning Bolt do 36 and 60 damage respectively at level 50, and 7% and 10% drain.
So if you slot for damage, and alternate these two, it will take about 4 cycles to kill the minion, maybe 5.

If you slot for end drain you will drain the minion in 3 cycles.
A lieutenant has roughly twice the hp of a minion, and a boss had 4 times. They all have the same size end bar.

So, solo against an even-con boss.. slotting for damage will drain the boss in 6 cycles and kill them in about 16. Slotting for drain will drain the boss in 3 cycles and kill them in 30 cycles or so.

Hmm. Maybe end drain isn't in quite as bad shape as I thought. Then again, using six attacks to temporarily diable a boss is still far worse than using two Tesla Cages.

Slot Short Circuit for 3 End Drain and 3 Recharge, and take Hasten.
Slot Ball Lightning for Accuracy and Damage - its endurance drain is negligible.


Your aim of being a team sapper is a good one, but a bit of an uphill struggle unfortunately.
These are the raw numbers. In my opinion, end drain is Electrical blast is very badly designed, and one of the most broken powerset features in the game, but this is how it is. :

Short Circuit drains 35% of an enemy's blue bar, 70% when slotted with 3 end mods.
Against +1s or +2s this drops a bit.

So two Short Circuits will drain an entire group of +2s.

Ball Lightning drain 7% of the Blue bar, or 14% when slotted. That extra 7% is not very much return for 3 slots in my opinion.

Similarly, the single target blasts drain between 5% and 7% of a blue bar.

Short Circuit has a base accuracy of 1.3, so its kind of slotted with one accuracy for free. This allows you to concentrate your slotting on other things.

I think its a great idea.
I had a similar thread here where a few ideas were kicked around.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=223894

I'd definitely invest in Screech. Ranged Mez is always good, especially when you can stack it.
I'd even take it over Shout. Scream and Shriek have the same activation and damage as Shout, and can be an attack chain all by themselves.

As for Shockwave, hmm, maybe. Personal preference. You could always corner pull with Rad Infection to bunch enemies up if you don't mind doing that.

Dark/Energy is my only 50 Tanker.

Energy Melee is pretty much regarded bottom of the heap, because it has one very average AoE in Whirling Hands. It has good single target damage, but not really enough to make up, especially if you're farming.

Dark Armor is a great fit though. A damage aura helps out with the lack of AoE, and Oppressive Gloom lets you stun bosses in one hit. So get that power at 26! It has a way lower end cost than Cloak of Fear does, due to the very small self damage, which is pretty much irrelevant due to the powerful heal in Dark Regeneration.

I'd make that swap, and maybe ditch Conserve Power or Physical Perfection. You seem to be overdosing on end management toolos here. Dark has a rep for being an end hog due to two factors:

Cloak of Fear and the damage aura both chew up large amounts of end. Ditch Cloak of Fear.
Dark regen takes 1/3 of an end bar at base. The Touch of Nictus proc fixes that. With these two steps (and the Performance Shifter proc in Stamina) you can probably lose Conserve Power and Physical Perfection.

I'd look into an epic pool that gives you a bit more AoE damage, or at least take Energy Torrent. Maybe drop Manouvers? It's pretty marginal on a tanker.

Ahhh, - you've switched epic pool. I'd maybe go Fire and take Fireball for better AoE Damage. Ice Storm has a 2 minute recharge.

Oh yeah, Dark/Energy looks great by the way

No worries.

Your single target approach is interesting, and not something I've seen on superteam discussions - they usually focus on AopE carnage.

I've always felt Sonic Blast's AoE capabilities get a bit underrated (it has Howl, Shockwave and Siren's Song all doing over 0.6 scalar damage and rechargiung very fast) but I can see how it could really mess with your Radiation anchors to use Shockwave. I can't help but wonder if focussing on a Boss and mixing Howl into your attack chain would work better - would minions gets killed by the splash damage.

Then again, Howl doesn't mix well with Choking Cloud I guess. Yeah, what you're doing makes perfect sense.

I'd be running Choking Cloud and Hot Feet. No leadership toggles, and generally running EF during fights.
Since I'd open every group with Flashfire, I didn't bother much with Radiation Infection.

If you do run into End isues, you could probably drop Tactics, or even take it in turns one at a time. Triple RI is going to make it pretty easy enough to hit things.

Are you planning to use three different anchors for RI?

Here's how I see cost and returns. Costs are my best estimates for a character in the high 30s.

Level 0 - SO's
Baseline performance,
+0% effective, costs 1 million.

Level 1 - Frankenslotting
Use double and triple IOs to improve the stats for that power. eg swap a Acc So and Dam SO for two Acc/Dams to get +40-something pwercent to each instead of +33%. Swap for two Acc/Dam?Ends to get a free end reduction IO.
+35% effective, costs 5 million

Level 2 - Cheap sets
Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact, Doctored Wounds, Red Fortune, Aegis. All these sets give the benfits of Frankenslotting and add some nice set bonuses. Suddenly, 1 in 5 ranegd attacks bounce off you, and you can start hitting reliably with temporary powers and so on.
+45% effective, costs 15 million

Level 3 - Expensive sets
Basilisks's Gaze, Positron's Blast, Guassian's Fire Control, Kinetic Combat, KB protection
These sets give very good bonuses too, but are less common, and require some forwards planning and money to obtain. Perma-dom's and soft-capped non-SR builds live here.
+60% effectiveness, costs 100 million

Level 4 - Purple (for the 50s) and uniques
KB Protection, Stealth IOs, LotG recharge, Steadfast IO, +Recovery IOs
You really start to feel the power, eg Regen Aura is up more than its down.
+75% effective, costs 1 billion

Numbers are made up and probably hideously out of date, and vary red/blue side.

The point is, the biggest jump is from Sos to frankenslotting, and thats the cheapest. From there on the curve is exponential. Each level adds maybe 10% efficiency while costing ten times as much as the previous one. Its a perfect set up in my opinion, that appeals to both the casual and hardcore player. There's always a new level within reach, you cant have it right now, but its achievable if you plan for it.

Repel/Repulsion Field are great against god-moded Paragon Protectors.

I loved the power on my Force Fielder.
My biggest problem with Kinetics' Repel is that it can knock your heal target away. There's a sweet spot where the enemy is out of Repel range but you're within the heal range, but that can be hard to hit exactly if you've Siphon'd Speed recently.

I ran a Fire/Rad duo without Stamina,. relying on double AMs (and a few set bonuses) to keep me in Endurance.

It worked really well most of the time. There were points in my cycle where Hasten and Am had run out and I'd start to run dry from the longer AM-free periods.

So with three of you, you should be more than fine without Stamina. You'll have more Recharge due to the thrid AM, hence more uptime, and more recovery bonus when you do.

Wiggz, you're just plain wrong.

Say I pick Trick Arrow/Archery because of a long held character concept that I've lovingly recreated in game. I've made the costume, written a bio, figured out a build and collected IOs to reinforce my idea of what he does.

And every time I get on a team some Fire/Kin called Fiery KinDude who looks like they pressed the random button says that I'm lame because I chose the wrong powerset, and deep down, I know they're right because I keep dying while they take out groups of enemies by themselves?

I can grow a thick skin, or solo, or re-roll as a Fire/Kin?

Thats an unbalanced game at its worse, and it would drive players away.
In this scenario, why even bother developing the graphics and animations for TA/A, if its going to be an unpleasant experience for anyone who plays it?

Luckily, the devs have taken time to balance the powersets so they're within 20% or so effectiveness of each other. There are a few underperformers or overperformers by some metrics, but nothing thats twice or half as effective as other sets.

Balance between sets is VITAL to a multiplayer game. Its what lets Green Arrow and Superman (or equivalents) fight on the same team in this game.

There are no conceptual reasons why Brutes cannot have Martial Arts, or Scrappers and Stalkers cannot have Superstrength.

Not all Brutes are angry inarticulate "SMASH"-ers.
Even if they were, there's nothing to stop them kicking people.
Many superstrong characters are not invulnerable, and rely on offensive use of their strength to fight (eg Sunspot from New Mutants)
Some can turn invisible or be stealthy.

Picking an archetype (or even powerset) is a game mechanic decision and has little bearing on your character's concept or personality.

I was level 23. Nice deduction.

To be fair, I should point out that my worse memories were fighting Freakshow. Flash Arrow's click debuff nature means that it doesn't stick to rezzers, and since they don't all rez at once, but one after the other it makes it fairly hard to keep the whole group debuffed.
This of course appplied to all sources of mitigation, like PGA, as well. So rating TA on that incident would be as fair as rating Sonic against mostly psi enemies.

I also had an annoying vocal teammate telling me we needed a Tanker, and he was getting proved right for once, since my Defender duo weren't able to keep the team safe. Pretty much two of any other primary would have sufficed, either by capping the teams Defence/flooring the enemies to hit or providing a massive AoE heal-bath.

I agree Trick Arrow can be "fairly impressive", but I've always found it to be near the bottom of the rung for Defenders.

71 million influence has been destroyed! Keep up the good work, citizen!

The Vanguard Psionic Shield is also worth getting.

Its 100 Vanguard Merits to buy for a 30 minute charge, so you can probably earn it from a single Mothership Raid.

Stacking that and Elusive Mind (or a medium purple) will cap your Psi defence.

Time to necropost.

I've got to level 45 and hit capped defence to all three positions with suppressed Hide, ie normal combat conditions. I've soloed and teamed to get there.

And I've loved it!

I carry break frees, like a Blaster, but find in large teams I don't generally draw much aggro if I do get mezzed (all my attacks are single target). I can often wait for the mez to wear off. Since level 35, which closed my AoE Defence hole, I've been happily wading into large packs of mezzing enemies and surviving, often using knockback and stuns to mitigate potential mez, just like a Blaster.

It really feels like being an exceptional but human martial artist on a team of supers - you can't afford to get bashed over the head repeatedly but you live by avoiding that situation.

The worse problems are mind controlling bosses (Rikti Mesmerists, Carnie Illusionists and Council Vampire Archons), generally I've had to use inspirations to deal with them, or tricks like keeping them in melee range so they use melee attacks (for Rikti and Council). Lieutenants with these powers get a quick Cobra Strike, followed by my undivided attention.

But most of the time I feel like a competent contributing team member.

In short, I highly recommend this to any jaded Stalker fans looking for a bit of extra excitement.

Its pretty much unique in being unresistable, yes. But calling it reliable or high value is misleading.

The base value is woefully small. Even with Power Boost (15 sec every 80 seconds with a good build), it has slightly more effect than everyone eating a small purple pill, ie not a lot.

Even if you only ever run Task Forces, you'll spend over 90% of the PvE game fighting enemies who are Boss class or less, and against them, Flash Arrow does somewhere between 20% (against even-con) and 40% (against +4s) of the To Hit Debuff of Radiation Infection.

I've played a duo of Trick Archers with slotted Manouvers and Flash Arrows, and had enormous trouble keeping my team alive for a Defender duo.